When It's All Over
by Trixi Summers
Summary: Set right after X2 and basically the aftermath of the movie. Rogue reflects on Jean's death and Pyro's leaving.


When It's All Over

*

'Home is behind,

The world ahead,

And there are many paths to tread.'

~ Billy Boyd, _The Steward of Gondor_

*

She sat at her desk in her dorm room, a pen drooping listlessly from her fingers. So much had happened all at once in the past week; her mind was still reeling from it. She tried to focus on the term paper she was suppose to write for Professor Xavier, but found that she couldn't.

That was just it. She couldn't. For some reason, this seemed like a colossal breakthrough in human thinking to her. Her brain was having so much trouble in functioning normally lately, the smallest things could surprise her.

Dr. Grey's death. No, that was it. That was the Psyche 101 revelation. Dr. Grey was dead. A figure so present in the daily life at Professor X's school was suddenly gone. Her high heels no longer tapped against the floors, the clicking sounds no longer echoing off the walls. Logan no longer had a love interest to crush on like a lovesick puppy dog. Actually, considering the fact that his mutant genes give him the basic abilities and appearance of a dog, this observation of him being a lovesick puppy dog is pretty accurate.

She pondered this for a few minutes more, trying to find happiness and laughter in it but gave up immediately when she remembered why she had just compared Logan to a -- she shook her head.

She took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on her term paper, but another recent event entered her mind. John... John had left the X-Men completely. He had forsaken his schoolwork, his elders, and his friends to join two bad-ass mutants who basically want to take over the world and make it a 'free' world for all mutants where humans are the ones chained to the walls with numbers burned into their foreheads.

She tried to forget about him and his betrayal. But she couldn't. The memory of his laughter ringing out in the food court at that museum echoed in her brain. Boy, that day seemed like such a long time ago, even though it had only been several days.

He had betrayed her. He had betrayed Bobby. She had only been friends with him for several months, but Bobby had known him a _lot_ longer than she had and he was taking this pretty hard. Damn him for betraying them. Damn him for throwing Bobby into utter chaos. It was bad enough that Bobby had to suffer with knowing that his own family had nearly disowned him. His own best friend betraying him nearly killed him.

If only he knew what kind of pain he had put them through, then maybe --just maybe-- he might come back. He might come back, and Bobby might revert back to his old self again, and everything might be fine. She and Bobby could go back to hanging out with him and they could go to the movies again where John would purposely sit behind them and throw popcorn at them throughout the movie. He would be taken back by Professor X. It would just depend on what he's done since he joined the Brotherhood.

_If he hadn't left us, Dr. Grey might still be alive._

The course of history might have changed and John would've suffered through the effects of Cerebro trying to kill them beside her and Bobby. Who knows? He might have been able to help her fly the jet to the spot where Stryker's helicopter used to be. Mr. Summers was always trying to teach John how to fly the Blackbird. Maybe then the Blackbird wouldn't have had a power failure and Dr. Grey wouldn't have had to get out of the jet to risk her life to save them.

Her hand began to move before she even realized it was moving. The ballpoint of the pen reached the paper and it began to write. The words she then wrote weren't part of the assignment she was suppose to be doing, but of a poem, as of yet untitled, about that day at Alkali Lake.

'_When water breaks through,_

_the wall of stone will fall._

_Water will rush through the trees,_

_its blue essence enveloping them all._

_It surrounds us on every side._

_Yet we are not drowning._

_Her power pushes us up._

_The jet lifts as if of its own free will._

_She has freed us._

_She has sacrificed her life for us._

_The water suddenly pushes forward,_

_running underneath us._

_It swallows her._

_But the sun rises out of the clouds,_

_bathing us in an etheral golden light._

_Yet she is gone._

_Forever._

_We will never forget you.'_

She slowly put the pen down, leaned back in her chair and put her hands in her lap. Before she had time to think about the poem, a knock on the door sounded and she turned her head to see Bobby peek in, his face creased in a frown.

"Rogue," he said softly, his voice lacking the usual joyful, almost carefree, attitude she had known him to have and had loved him for. "Are you ready to go?"

She checked herself and realized that they were supposed to be going to a movie with Kitty and Jubilee. Tensely, she nodded and got up to get her jacket, eager to get some fresh air. The pair left, her door closing behind her, with the poem laying on the desk, waiting for her to come back.

But when the door opened again, it wasn't Rogue who came through it. John quietly stole inside and looked around before closing the door completely behind him. After a short search of the room, he came upon the poem, reading it once before letting it fall back down onto the desk listlessly, him trying to keep his emotions intact. He was here for a job for the Brotherhood, not to come back 'home'.

*

A/N: Not really sure if the X-Men's jet is called the Blackbird, but I read it in another fanfiction, whose name I forget. And this is going by movie-cannon since I don't have a lot of X-Men background info.


End file.
